Bottom line is, she isn’t unknown. Many well known well established proven conservatives have known her for decades and have come out strongly supporting her. W knows her personally and has for many years. She’s a Christian and whether secular conservatives want to admit this or not, the most strident defenders of real constructionist values are Christians, and that’s the exact kind of person who should be on the court. The critics of her do not know her. The supporters of her DO know her. Back when she was a democrat Texas was owned lock, stock and barrel by democrats. Phil Graham, Rick Perry, Richard Shelby, and many others in and out of Texas were democrats. As the democrat party left them, they became Republicans. No one seemed to mind that Graham, Perry, Shelby, or many others used to be democrats. Reagan used to be a democrat, and that didn’t seem to bother many conservatives. In fact, I’ve heard quite a few conservatives mention that with glee, to poke at democrats. But somehow, since Miers was a democrat over 20 years ago when ALL OF TEXAS was Democrat, that’s bad? This has become such a silly argument, with the pro side being made up of things that are known about her, while the con side consists of supposition and accusations of what she might do based on fears of past justices. Past justices like souter, kennedy and o’conner who did NOT know Reagan or Bush 41. W does know Miers and has for many years.
I can’t wait for the next few months to go by, and if she finds in her rulings in such a way that there is little if any daylight between her and Scalia, Thomas and Roberts, it will be so funny to see all the conservatives, torches in hand right now waiting to light her up at the stake before she even speaks at the hearings, become so silent on the issue and not want to talk about it. Where will all the mouthing off without fact be in a few months if that happens? Because ultimately, how she votes is ALL that matters in this. Not who she isn’t, what she hasn’t done in her career, or who she doesn’t know. But how she finds in rulings on that court. That is ALL that matters. And the bottom line is, three of the last four nominees from Republican Presidents were already judges, who the President didn’t know, who supposedly had a conservative philosophy, and ALL THREE OF THEM did nothing but BURN conservatives on the court. W avoided all that with Miers. She’s not some "on high" self important judge who’s disconnected from the real world. W does know Miers. She’s got a proven lifetime of over 30 years of conservative and Christian pro-life professional and personal opinions, as backed up by people who have known her for decades both professionally and personally, unlike o’conner, kennedy, and souter. Not to mention the fact that W has nominated over 300 solidly conservative judges on the lower court levels. Not one moderate. Not one liberal. It’s foolish to contend that this will be his first non-conservative nominee to the courts, and to the Supreme Court no less, especially since Harriet Miers is the main person who picked all the great judges to present to W. The same great conservative judges that her critics love so much! THAT is insane. The odds are far greater that she will be a conservative than a weak kneed moderate like o’conner or a liberal like souter. All this fear mongering without the benefit of fact is really getting old. Conservatives are supposed to be smart enough to wait for facts to be laid out before rushing to judgment. That’s what I’ve thought conservatives were like at least. When this is all over, I hope the rash "burn her at the stake" conservatives who care more about picking a fight than getting the desired results, will come back to the table and learn a lesson from this. There is more than one way to get what you want. And picking a fight for fights sake isn’t always the best way. Feeding on our own and trying to destroy someone rashly, giving in to knee jerk emotion, before they’ve even spoken is quite an unattractive thing that I hope will NEVER AGAIN happen in the conservative movement. All this needs to be remembered and made note of as what NOT to do. Patience. Look at the facts, not what you "think might" happen. And consider that her defenders have known her for may years, and her detractors don’t. Neither do you.
I enjoyed your post, however you state that "the facts in evidence so far indicate that she will be a conservative Justice, more conservative than O'Connor". HERE is the crux of the dispute between those of us who are anti-Miers, since in our view the facts overwhelmingly indicate that she will NOT be a conservative justice, and NOT be more conservative than O'Connor.
First of all, just seeing how angry and emotional everyone on FR is getting about this nomination both pro and con speaks VOLUMES about just how disastrous a choice this was for the conservative movement.
What I can't understand is why there are still so many conservatives of good faith who choose to ignore the mounting (and mountain of) objective evidence we have about Harriet Miers which indicates that she is no conservative nor likely to vote "conservatively" on the Court.
It should also be noted that the VAST majority of us who oppose the Miers nomination are not from the inside the beltway elite, but faithful conservatives who have not swallowed the Bush Administration Kool-Aid on this nomination.
What's so frustrating is that there appears to be no substance to the conservative defenses of the Miers nomination other than we should "trust" the President on this. Conservatives who support (or do not actively oppose) this nomination appear to be either blinded by personal loyalty to the President, care solely about abortion and nothing else, or are fellow evangelicals defending someone who they think is one of their own. I have nothing personal against Harriet Miers. She's not dumb, and she's not evil...she is simply a very nice, well-meaning woman of average to above-average legal talents who is nonetheless extremely underqualified for a seat on the Supreme Court. She is also clearly a crony of the President. (How many conservatives who support this nomination would nonetheless be screaming bloody murder if Bill Clinton had appointed someone like Lanny Davis to the Supreme Court?)
Perhaps even more importantly to those of us that oppose this nomination is the fact is Harriet Miers is NOT AT ALL LIKELY to vote with Scalia and Thomas. Miers record, what little there is, indicates that she is NOT and has never been any conservative! Even a cursory review of her past demonstrates this. EVERY piece of information about Miers that has been disclosed over the course of the past two weeks has indicated that she is either a "vacillating, unreliable vessel for whatever party or individual happens to exercise power at any given moment", or even worse, a doctrinaire liberal. On the Dallas City Council, she supported the South African divestment campaign, voted to raise taxes, and supported affirmative action in the fire department. She has given money to Democrats and Al Gore (Long AFTER her so-called evangelical conversion). She was PRO-affirmative action in the WH in the Grutter case. She established a Womens Studies department at SMU to showcase far left feminists. She has been active with the very liberal ABA for many years and has shown disdain for the Federalist Society - which is a huge red flag that in and of itself should be enough for conservatives to presumptively oppose her nomination.
Past history has shown that whether or not she is personally religious or pro-life is IRRELEVANT to how she would rule on the bench. Both O'Connor and Kennedy are both, yet have drifted further and further Left the longer they have been on the Court. The fact is, Harriet Miers is NOT a conservative and we would be LUCKY if she ended up voting like O'Connor, though everything in background indicates that it is FAR more likely she will vote with the Stevens/Souter/Ginsberg/Bryer wing of the Court on everything except perhaps abortion - and even that is no sure thing.
How many of us have given a pass to the President and his disastrous open-borders immigration policy and his approval of skyrocketing spending just because we trusted him on this ONE issue? How much time, money, and effort have many of us spent to elect George W. Bush President, only to be rewarded by this blatant betrayal of promises???